As white supremacists and neo-Nazis try to infest our communities with hate, it is important to contest their revisionist history. We should take down their symbols, but also examine the untruths taught in our schools about the Civil War.

A renegotiated NAFTA that subordinates the needs of workers will meet the fate of the now-dead Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade deal. The humans in the United States, Canada and Mexico won’t be tricked or trickled down on again.

Movements, not politicians, are driving debate within the Democratic Party. The outcome is far from clear, but bemoaning this battle is like decrying the rising of the sun. People are engaged, and the demand for change is real.

Supremacists came to Charlottesville because they’re afraid of change - so afraid, they’re willing to terrorize the rest of us to prevent it. Here's what we can do now to help dismantle racism in Virginia and beyond.

People’s organizations, armed with the peaceful power of the vote, can take back statehouses in Virginia and all across the country, reversing the agenda of helmeted cowards and their allies. Wouldn’t that be the sweetest revenge?

There are only two sides here: Right and wrong. Murderer and victim. Hatred and love. When it really matters, the president of the United States refuses to call terror by its name, or pick a side. But we can.

Betsy DeVos says she supports "great public schools," but her actions show her hypocrisy. She undermines public options, yet favors schools owned by her friends. What she really wants is to tilt the playing field toward private ownership.

Is the anti-Trump resistance evolving into a movement that produces leaders with a mandate to govern with a progressive, grassroots-based agenda? We are seeing evidence that the answer will be a resounding "yes."

It was a big day on Long Island. President Donald Trump was jetting in for a victory lap on health care and some “tough talk” about immigration. Easy, right? Sorry, Donald. Things didn’t work out quite the way you expected!

Archive for February, 2013

A new poll conducted by Unreliable Press Worldwide’s Chief Polling Correspondent and multimillionaire Marcy Popindick asked the question: Do you support strengthening Social Security:

By eliminating all taxes on all people earning more than $250,000.

By allowing Wall Street bankers to manage the SS Trust Fund.

Don’t give a shit.

The poll found that 100% of respondents strongly agreed with the first statement and 100% strongly supported the second.

Ms. Popindick reported that the third choice received support only if the first two options were removed.

The poll is bipartisan and was conducted on Wall Street. It included interviews with all persons who arrive at work in chauffeur-driven limousines.

They’re coming for your earned Social Security benefit. And they won’t stop until they get it.

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Beware the phony poll. Many of these solicitations contain a message within a question intended to garner support for a specific policy.

For example, “would you accept reductions to Social Security to prevent the destruction of the program?” The answer has to be: yes you would.

The questions, of course, are much more subtly concocted so a respondent doesn’t recognize the set-up or that he’s the mark. But the scam is on.

Here is an article on two polls concerning Social Security. One with a skewed question designed to elicit answers that the pollsters seek in order to support a preconceived notion. The other contained more objective questions.

In an article by Isiah Poole, this fighter for the 99% highlighted a recent Bloomberg poll that contained a rigged question. You can read the question in the link and be sure to recognize the sneaky Pete part about SS: it asks respondents if they would support reductions “to help the program remain financially secure.” Get it. The inference is if you don’t support reductions, the program goes belly up.

The second poll referred to by Poole is much more objective. The questions are genuine and seek an honest result.

***

Military Tribunes

You may think that the new American monster is the Bible-bellowing Christian who insists that the Garden of Eden was populated by tyranosaurs and brontosauri.

If you do, you’d be wrong.

The true American monster is the Empire’s modern tribune – the officers who lead soldiers into battle against resource-rich nations and who often kill innocent men, women and children.

These officers and their men frequently suffer from PTSD, a syndrome that causes a variety of symptoms not the least of which is a life-long guilt that accompanies gratuitous killing in a war zone.

Unlike his Roman counterpart, who murdered to make a living and bore no regrets, the modern version suffers from mental injury and recurring nightmares that can cause grave harm to a former soldier’s future life.

Say adios, amigo to the your local post office and mail carrier. Republicans set about long ago to destroy this fixture of the American landscape.

USPS service delivery truck in a residential area of San Francisco, California. Great jobs, great benefits, great service, great neighbors. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Just saddle it up with debt in the same manner that equity firms seize companies and drive them into bankruptcy for ill-gotten gains, so too have Republicans jumped on board the belly up train and deliberately saddled the United States Postal Service with an unsustainable phony bill. The legislated debt, about $5 billion worth, forces the USPS to prepay pension costs 75 years ahead – for all employees, those not yet hired nor even born.

The entire effort is a scam intended to kill off the service, hand it over on a platinum platter to private firms to run for fun and profit and leave you holding a two dollar postage stamp.

Well, how do you think Wall Street millionaires become billionaires? Corrupt government that’s how.

President Obama’s nominee for Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew, suffered some embarrassment during his hearings before the Senate Finance Committee. It appears as though Lew, a former Wall Street executive who worked at Citibank during its bailout phase, is one of the Street’s lesser lights. He never got a million dollar bonus. Not once. Adjusted for inflation, even Genghis Khan achieved that lofty status hundreds of years ago.

That raises the question, what’s wrong with Jack Lew???

He’s brilliant, a magnacum laude graduate of Harvard. Nothing to sneeze at, ya know. But he never got a million dollar bonus. Nope. All he could muster was a measly $940,000. And even that amount was predicated on his landing a full time government position with influence on financial affairs. How embarrassing is that! Not only did he not receive a million bucks, but the amount he did eke out was conditional.

I mean, like, are you really qualified to occupy the government position that matters most to Wall Street if you’re merely a low level millionaire. I’d vote against him just for being a slacker.

Wall Street’s team in the White House. From left: the President, Lew and Geithner..

On second thought, maybe we should give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, he did work for Citibank when it fell flat on its back after disclosure of its mortgage fraud practices during that nefarious period when it received billions in taxpayer charity. Let’s face it, $45 billion doesn’t go very far in bonus money. Everybody has to give in a little.

On a positive note, like former Treasury boss Tim Geithner, Lew is a Wall Street patsy. And being a dupe to the Street is the paramount qualification for anyone who aspires to that lofty position.

Word is also out that he has programmed into his GPS the location of every influential country club between New York City and the Capitol.

Nothing could be more important when your running the Treasury than a few martinis, a good steak and a round of golf at a country club for millionaires. Gratis, of course. Compliments of the boys on the Street.

Takeover complete.

***

Modern Dinosaur Fights.

Yes, there are still dinosaur fights and they are occurring in the twenty-first century, believe it or not.

No. Not between dinosaurs; but about dinosaurs.

You would think highly educated people, like with things called PhDs, the fighting would be limited or at least controlled.

But here’s one that broke out in the nineteenth-century and continues in some circles today. It’s all about brontosaurs and apatosaurs. Apparently, they are one and the same, synonymous if you will.

How did that happen? Well, some years back an archaeologist assembled the bones of a brontosaur but the finished product lacked the head. So he made one up.

Some years later another archaeologist discovered the head and renamed the lizard apatosaur. Or something like that. The upshot is that the brontosaur became extinct – again, the only creature to become extinct twice. The second time of course was in scientific journals.

The dispute was nearly settled except for some stubborn dinosaur aficionados who insist upon calling this animal by its original name. I’m one of them. I like brontosaur which is what I grew up calling the thing whether it ever existed or not. By the way, if you’re still interested, it means thunderlizard.

And so the dispute continues among scientists. Some archaeologists just can’t resist behaving like a bunch of Congress critters.

***

Pete Peterson Strikes Again; And Again; And Again.

It seems whatcha call your Mainstream Corporate Media just can’t get enough of this guy.

He’s the evil cash behind the Fix The Debt flim flam.

Fix The Debt, you’ve heard of it. It’s a group composed of some of the richest people in world history who contrived a plot to lower their own taxes by scamming working people out of earned benefits such as Social Security and Medicare.

This nasty scheme originated in the minds of people who hate people and who believe we should all revert to the status their god intended for us: that of servants to the wealthy.

Don’t think so? Well, they’ve already accomplished a 21st century form of slavery throughout most of Asia. In its modern iteration, this type of servitude is paid a wage. Call it slavery or wage slavery, the goal is the same. Riches for the rich; subsistence for the rest of us.

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***

Angry Orangutan.

Hair like this doesn’t grow on orangutans, ya know. (Photo David Shankbone).

The Trump is angry as a bear.Accused of having orangutan hair.His voice is still shrillHe’s suing for five mil.But he won’t get a dime on a dare.

Anyone accuses me of being the Donald’s father, I’m suing for five million coconuts.

Sen. Marco Rubio’s SOTU response was frazzled with right wing excuses for the housing bubble and after that time-worn and lame claim that the gubmint made everybody do it, the speech reached its crescendo of unparalleled mediocrity.

Marco Rubio, all bright eyed and bushy tailed during his response to the SOTU address, found a clever way to plug bottled water on TV. Rumors persist that the Republican senator from Florida is seeking the presidency of the Bottled Water Association.

It left me thirsting for reason, rationality and, well, a little common sense. The response lacked all of the above and was meteoric in its vapidity. To Rubio’s good fortune, this close encounter with Republican mendacity bypassed Follyland with little notice other than a gulp and caused no permanent damage to the planet.

The senator, in so many words, said he believes firmly that the foreclosure crisis was precipitated by the Community Reinvestment Act passed in 1977 and inflamed by former government organizations Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The reference was to right wing mythology that government interference caused the housing crisis and the economic meltdown that began in 2007. In strict compliance with right wing myth, Rubio echoed conservative story-telling that deregulation and the ever precious “free market” ideology were not at fault.

In a report filed by UPW’s Marcy Popindick shortly after the speech, a spokesman reiterated the senator’s position on the foreclosure crisis.

He gave as an example of fraud perpetrated by borrowers, a $300,000 mortgage issued by First NationsPride Home Ownership Bank and Loan Company to a 10-year old boy who claimed to be self-employed operating a lemonade stand.

Executives at the bank claimed government legislation forced them to approve loans of this type and they admitted no wrongdoing.

The mortgage was eventually purchased as part of a bundle by Fannie for cash thus freeing up funds and forcing the bank to originate even more substandard loans.

The boy, in this case, had obviously lied about his age when he signed the loan documents and it was later discovered that he also overstated the income he earned from the lemonade stand he operated as a sole proprietorship.

The 10-year old claimed an income of 80 cents a day. However, that claim was later shown to be grossly inflated because the boy occasionally sold a cup of the pink variety to a banker who charged a nickel fee for the privilege of doing business with the bank That fee had never been deducted from the income reported by the business on its financial statements.

The mortgage lender instituted foreclosure proceedings against the boy through a robo-signing collection agency. The lemonade stand was also seized by the lender since the boy had used his business as additional collateral against the $300,000 loan.

The spokesman said the boy should have realized he had no chance of ever repaying the amount he borrowed and should not have swindled the mortgage originator into approving the loan.

The originator, again according to the Rubio spokesman, bears no responsibility for issuing the loan since government legislation establishing CRA and Fannie and Freddie policies virtually force mortgage writers to approve such substandard loans.

In addition to the foreclosure action, the boy will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law in order to prevent an epidemic of moral hazard behavior and, depending on the outcome of the trial, he could face up to ten years in prison for defrauding a lender.

***

Pizza Bagel.

Bagels and lox is a Follyland favorite. If it’s fresh, not frozen and thawed, it’s quite a treat.

An Italian bagel’s quite the thingGarlic, provolone and sauce just flingThat’s my only helpful clueThe recipe is up to youInvent your own bada boom, bada bing.

***

Duct Tape Stocks Soar On News Of Revolutionary Use For The Sticky Stuff.

The North Carolina House Judiciary Committee introduced legislation making it a felony to expose “private parts” for the “purpose of arousing or gratifying sexual desire.” First offense, six months in the pokey.

It occurred to me that there are hundreds of thousands of North Carolina residents who could strip naked and not arouse the slightest sexual desire in anyone. There are laws on the books, though, prohibiting nudity of any kind and for that we should all give a vote of thanks.

However, the new legislation proposed by the committee, referred to as the “nipple law”, prohibits the exposure of female nipples including the areola for the purpose of enticing men or women.

The Senate Corporate Welfare Committee voted to continue offering taxpayer charity to a corporate political donor.

The corrupti* in Congress never felt so sorry for rural citizens who are suffering through the Great Recession. Those citizens, as well as many others, have had their lives destroyed by loss of jobs, foreclosures and cuts to safety net programs.

But half a billion to a campaign donor – not a problem. That’s the donation the pharmaceutical company Amgen received from the Follylanders in our nation’s capital.

Hatching crooked deals in the Senate. When it comes to payola, Orrin can sniff a payoff for miles around Follyland. And when a lobbyist whispers a need for government charity, he’s all ears.

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Votes in Congress are like an auction.

Five thousand dollar bid, dollar bid, dollar bid.

Got it. Who’ll give me ten?

Ten thousand dollar bid, dollar bid, dollar bid.

Got it. Who’ll give me twenty?

No doubt whatsoever that the members of the Senate Corporate Welfare Committee aimed deliberately to hide this charity provision in the fiscal cliff chicanery because they feared doing so openly in a separate bill would the raise ire of the American people.

And rightly so.

Two of the culprits responsible for this taxpayer handout are Max Baucus (D-MT), chairman, and Orrin Hatch (R-UT), ranking member of what is sometimes referred to as the Finance Committee.

They much preferred to sneak behind the backs of the people as lawmakers have done so often in the past.

This time they got caught and are making feeble excuses to cover their crooked asses devious behavior.

That’s how Greg Sargent refers to the inclination among the illiterati* in Follyland to clone an erroneous idea and ping pong it back and forth and around to each other until it becomes something akin to the inerrant word of God himself.

Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize winning economist, points to a military phrase called “incestuous amplification” which defines an idea that everyone in the know uncritically accepts as infallible truth, but which is nevertheless wrongheaded. He uses as an example the belief among the Allies at the beginning of World War II that Germany would not attack west through the Ardennes, which is exactly what the Wehrmacht did.

And so it is in Follyland Call it feedback loop or incestuous amplification, once a dumb notion takes hold it gets batted around by the illiterati to the illiterati and back again forming the continuous and unassailable loop regardless of how goofy the notion may be.

And that is what is happening right now with the “deficit” mania gripping the discussion among the New York-Washington mainstream corporate media.

Hence, it is incumbent upon us all to accept the true faith and embrace the dogma that the deficit is about to destroy the nation.

Of course, nothing could be farther from the truth. The reality is that there is a conspiracy among the country’s elite to exploit a nonexistent “deficit crisis” to bring about drastic cuts to the social benefits Americans have earned all of their working lives.

As the plot thickens it leads us directly to the austerity schtick – the dangerous and destructive notion that sharp decreases in government spending are the only means to save us from the imminent decline and fall of the American empire.

In fact, the opposite is the case. Dean Baker has noted many times on his website,Beat the Press, deficits are needed to fill the spending void created by the private sector to prevent the jobs recession from growing worse than it already is.

The real cause of current deficits remains the collapse of the housing bubble and Wall Street malfeasance. And the future drivers are out of control costs of health care and health insurance.

Government spending is actually declining, now somewhat less than a trillion dollars a year and the debt to GDP ratio, never a concern, is improving

That’s it in a nutshell. The austerity schtick is a ruse invented for the purpose of destroying the social benefits people have spent their entire lives earning.

“Deficit hysteria” is a gambit with the same devious motive – to cut earned social benefits for the “small people” or the peasants, as our betters once referred to us.

*Illiterati n pl of illiterata.Reference to people in Follyland who can read and write but who refuse to think for themselves. Many receive huge salaries from corporate paymasters and are eager to do their bosses’ bidding. Also do favors for elected official in exchange for access to insider information.

A couple of good ole boys who got caught by their wives after being out drinking all night???

No!!! Two know-nothing GOP senators after tangling with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the contrived Benghazi hearings.

Doesn’t matter who they are. Nobody cares.

……….

Lopsided Victory.

Some ladies you just can’t push around, guys. But then you’re Republicans. You wouldn’t know that.

The winner by a knockout, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Next time wear your helmets and body armor, fellas.

……….

Ryan Reveals Alien Ancestry.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) revealed that many centuries ago an ancient ancestor immigrated to Earth from the planet Vulcan and engaged in illicit sexual relations with a female member of the cave dwelling Ryan clan.

The female claimed she was seduced by the Vulcan when he placed her in drug induced hypnotic states.

The affair, which lasted over a period of several months, resulted in pregnancy before the woman’s mate discovered the liaisons.

The woman insisted that the Vulcan returned repeatedly to a secret place in the forest where she often went to pick berries. While there, the undocumented immigrant beguiled her and gave her the mind altering potion.

The mate became incensed, followed his spouse to the hiding place where the alleged affairs occurred and severely wounded the Vulcan by firing an arrow into his back while he was on top of the female engaging in yet another illicit act.

The Vulcan denied the affair; after all, it was his word against a jealous mate’s. However, he eventually confessed after being subjected to a technique called waterboarding which the clan leaders referred to as not torture. After being repeatedly not tortured, the Vulcan succumbed.

The exchange of genetic material that occurred as a result of the illicit union between the Vulcan and the clan member became embedded in the genes of the offspring and remains in the DNA of the clan. Its effects surface only once in several generations during the modern era.

The gene that passes to the unlucky Ryan member reveals itself during the aging process.

It is becoming apparent that Paul Ryan, as he grows older, is the unfortunate recipient of the mixed gene pool in the current generation.

Providence, however, smiled on Ryan. The ancient clan from which he evolved had declared abortion illegal and its chieftains refused repeated requests by the Vulcan-impregnated female to undergo the procedure.

The clan also rejected medical coverage for its members requiring them to provide for their own health care through a voucher system. As a result of this callous attitude, the mother died during delivery for lack of adequate medical care. The baby however survived and passed his traits onto future generations.

It is from this background that Ryan inherited his primitive social belief system.

…..

On Meet the Press last week, Paul Ryan issued what he expected to be a threat by saying the sequestration, the silly agreement agreed to after the Senate disagreed about some other agreement (you figure it out) will really, really happen. Now everybody in Follyland is scared.

It turns out nobody paid much attention to Ryan (not since he struggled with fourth grade arithmetic to develop his phony budget and instantly became a DC math genius) nobody, that is, except whatcha call your mainstream corporate media. They fawned all over this arithmetic challenged budget faker.

Ryan’s budget, you see, doesn’t balance until 2060.

2060!!! Are you shittin’ me?

Nope. 2060. According to s spokesman, during a critical addition operation Ryan forgot to carry the one. So instead of balancing in 2020, turns out it won’t for 40 more years.

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Ryan has been called seriously serious by whatcha call your mainstream corporate media because of his willingness to pilfer funds from the elderly by raiding Social Security using a variety of sneaky methods such as profitization of the program and raising the retirement age to somewhere between 70 and 100 or thereabouts.

He has also been referred to as courageously courageous for his willingness to cheat seniors out of their health care – again through a profitization scam using vouchers; and then fearlessly fearless for stealing candy from little kids. I made that last part up; but with Ryan who can tell?

Anyways, his threat still stands and it means that the House won’t agree to any more agreements unless they’re disagreeable to the majority of Americans and agreeable to the 1% who send payola Ryan’s way.

Anyways, if the threat prevails, the War Department will suffer cuts as will a number of domestic programs including Medicare cuts to providers (who used to be called doctors) who provide medical care to providees (used to be called patients). The providees, however, will not be required to pay any more to their providers. They won’t pay any less either.

Social Security has been desequestered, that is, not included in the cuts scheduled to take place after the sequester becomes effective. However, cuts could be made to the program after the sequester sequesters.

Is that clear?

……….

Mitch McConnell, Republican propagandist extraordinaire second only to Fox News, warned gun owners that Democratic critters are a fixin’ to confiscate yo’ guns. Yessarie bob, they’re a fixin’ to break down the door to yo’ house, tie up yo’ wife and little chilins, konk you over yo’ head and confiscate yo’ guns. Yesserie, bob.

McConnell putting on a happy face – for him.

They’re surroundin’ us, Mitch declared, so ya’all better git yo’ wagons in a circle. They’re a comin’ for yo’ guns. Ya’ all know what a circle is now don’t cha. Ya’ all learnt that in higher ejacashun in third grade.

Money is the root of all evil. How many times have the heard that saying.? It is, like so many other adages, an incomplete quote. The actual phrase reads the LOVE of money is the root of all evil, a subtle difference that drastically changes the meaning of the author’s intent. The reference is to the sin of greed, an evil which leads men astray. Nothing wrong with money per se or spending a little of it to have some fun.

Saul Tarsus, the man who invented Christianity, wrote the statement in a letter to somebody named Timothy in what is now referred to as the epistle, 1 Timothy to be exact.

In the missive, Tarsus (aka St. Paul) is warning his disciple against false teachers who warp messages for personal gain.

Sound familiar. Today, the Second Amendment is perverted to drastically distort its meaning solely for gun sellers to rake in huge amounts of ill-gotten money.

“A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

The last part of the sentence is the one we’re most familiar with and it’s the phrase that’s routinely propagandized by gun sellers.

Historians now tell us that one reason for including the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights was the insistence of the South. The fear of slave rebellions among Southern plantation owners was at the core of the amendment’s adoption. Seems the slave holders demanded the right to raise a posse to quell possible insurrections or to hunt down and lynch escaped slaves.

St Paul, the man who created a new religion out of an old one, was a prescient observer of the weaknesses of men. His message rings through the ages and applies more than ever to the abhorrent behavior of modern men.

……….

And that brings us to Larry Summers, an advocate, if not one of the architects of, the current recession and the collapse of the economy in 2007.

Summers, a Robert Rubin acolyte, was and remains the champion of financial deregulation. He praised Gramm-Leach-Bliley – notoriously named the Financial Modernization Act – the legislation that repealed Glass-Steagall and led to the “too big to fail” creation of monster banks and advanced the greed that pervades Wall Street wheeling and dealing.

As Treasury secretary, he advised former President Bill Clinton to sign off on the Commodity Futures Modernization Act that is directly responsible for derivatives trading fraud and the wholesale foreclosure crisis.

Note the word “modernization” in the names of the two acts. In 1984 style, the word lends a degree of respectability to the legislation it never deserved.

Summers it appears is never more than a few months away from popping up in the news and so it was once again last week. At Davos, Switzerland, where the world’s noblemen gather from time to time to decide the fate of commoners, Summers distorted or is ignorant of the facts of yesteryear, a revelation that surfaced in a speech to the gathering of financial royalty in which he claimed that wages increased along with productivity during the Clinton years.

Oh, my. Larry’s wrong again. The graph in a column by Dean Baker clearly shows the disparity between the two, a trend which began during Reagan’s reign and continues today.

Government statistics revealed the separating of the ways between productivity and wages for years. Was Larry inferring that the government didn’t know information published by the government during his term of service in, well, the government?

Facts still have a nasty way of interfering with one’s opinions, even Larry’s.

Summers seems to have a penchant for saying and doing the wrong thing. The man’s an economics genius, and a rich one at that. But talk about your foot in mouth syndrome, this guy has the uncanny ability to fit both in.

As president of Harvard, for example, he bemoaned the lack of women pursuing careers in science and engineering in a poorly worded statement that was largely misinterpreted as a slight to the intelligence of women.

Well, that’s Larry for ya. Getting entangled in his own dumb words and then getting fired for speaking them.

No need to feel sorry for this genius, however. His buds on Wall Street did that, to the tune of millions. Yes, indeed, Larry is a multimillionaire.

Kinda makes me wallow in self-pity though. I’ve said lots of stupid things in my life and never got a dime for it.

Like the time I said women don’t get rich on Wall Street because they can’t cheat and steal as well as men. Sorry, ladies. No offense intended, but I’m sure you could do just as well as the men if you’d just put your mind to it.

Could it be that most ladies just don’t want to cheat and steal?

Well, that’s hard to understand, particularly since cheating and stealing are the American way. How else ya gonna get rich in this country?

……….

You remember John McCain, right? He’s still one of two senators from the state of Arizona.

You may also recall that McCain, still one of two senators from the state of Arizona, was the knight of the realm during the reign of George W. Bush.

He voted for the war in Iraq and that was just one among many of his dumb votes. There are so many it’s hard to tell which is his dumbest, but the vote for the war is right up there at the top of a very long and still growing list.

He also voted in favor of what was trumped up as the “surge”, the operation in which Bush sent 20,000 additional troops to that worn torn country.

The effectiveness of the surge was woefully distorted by whatcha call your mainstream corporate media and mythologized as the operation that turned the war around.

It did no such thing, of course.

The war was indeed on a more favorable path. But it was turning long before the additional forces invaded the country.

Some factors responsible for the turnabout were

The arming of Sunnis with U.S. munitions to enlist these tribes in the fight against Shite and al Qaeda insurgents in a movement known as the Awakening.

The deracination of entire neighborhoods by uprooting Shites and Sunnis from their homes and relocating them to separate areas behind concrete barriers.

A greater degree of cooperation from the Shite cleric Muqtada al Sadr who withdrew his forces from the insurgency at the request of the Iranian government.

These processes were in place and achieving a reduction in violence before the “surge” had any impact on the war.

So here comes John McCain. You remember him. He’s still one of the senators from Arizona.

The guy was ragging incessantly on Defense nominee Chuck Hagel about a statement the former senator made years ago regarding the dangerous surge policy of the Bush administration. Hagel might have been more judicious in his use of words and substituted “fruitless” for “dangerous.”

Mrs. McCain can Johnny come out and play today.

No. Johnny’s been fighting and he’s being punished.

Nevertheless, Hagel was correct in his assessment at the time and McCain, still a senator from Arizona, was flat, dead wrong.

Warning: The following material is really dirty. So I hope you enjoy reading it.

A fellow stepped into the hallEffects of Cialis clear to allHe began to sway And soon lost his wayLeft his mistress waiting to ball..A woman stepped into the hallWith spiked heels and suffered a fallCompletely undressedAnd highly distressedNeeding ice for her double highball..A woman stepped into the hallTripped over a guy legs asprawlTo her pleasant distractionHe was ready actionHer yearnings she could not forestall.Also posted to MadKane’s Limerick blog.http://www.madkane.com/humor_blog/category/limerick-offs/